Ok, a lot of people are blathering on about Diebold stealing the election, but seem to not know anything about how elections are stolen.

Simply put, how many election districts was Diebold actually used in 2004?

4 out of 88.

That's right.

And I bet not one of you can tell me what Ohio's swing districts are, and which ones switched from Gore to Bush and by how much.

Bev Harris, who knew nothing about either elections, computers or statistics created a furor but never came up with a fact.

The same with Robert Kennedy's crappy piece in Rolling Stone. Lots of theories, no facts.

Why? Because the evidence of fraud would not be subtle. It would be out there, and clear to find.

All you need to show is that a district switched parties with no other reason, no increased GOTV, no change in population worthy of note, no change in the economy or increase in church membership. Not too hard to find. But, no one has found it.

Exit polling is a snapshot, and prone to distortions. Ask Tom Bradley. If exit polling was accurate, he'd have been governor of California.

Which is why I can't take claims of Diebold theft seriously. Because no one has bothered to do the simple, if time consuming charting of election patterns in suspect districts.

The reason the GOP wants you to worry about Diebold is simple: it's a distraction and a demoralizer. It's a handy excuse for doing nothing for pessimists.

Meanwhile, while you're worrying about a machine not used in most ED's, the GOP is directly going after the right to vote.

While millions of words have been pissed away on Diebold, the GOP has conducted an ongoing stealth campaign to deny millions of poor and elderly the right to vote, Florida 2000 writ large. And the silence on the blogs has been deafening. Diebold is easy to be scared of, but Voter ID laws are the real deal in voter suppression and targeted at the most dedicated voters, the elderly and minorities.

And they have been passing all over the South and now in the House. People have argued that, well, if they have Diebold, this is just icing on the cake. Bullshit. Diebold is a distraction, they want to taint the process of voting by alleging widespread fraud.

While Dems have been screaming about Diebold, the GOP has been screaming that minorities and illegals have voted illegally. But when researched, there is no evidence of voter fraud. None.

The fact is that you won't need Diebold if you scare people away from voting.